Monday, October 30, 2017
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Spain has become an uncivilized, dangerous country not far from the average country of the Muslim world

Catalonia has declared independence; the Spanish Senate immediately responded with the activation of Article 155, a nuclear option. Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, an attractive 150-centimeter-tall female dwarf with the Napoleon complex, was named the Imperial Protector for Catalonia. I guess that there are lots of feminists etc. in Catalonia who won't discuss any absurd features of this new "leader" sent from Madrid.

Participants of the October 1st referendum were beaten, big rubber tennis balls were shot at them, their fingers were broken. On top of that, Madrid is openly threatening the Catalan officials with 30 years in prison for "rebellion". (The very fact that a member state of the EU allows such huge prison sentences for a "crime" that has this funny and vacuous name is surreal. Unless you still live in the Middle Ages, you can't automatically arrest people just for their being "rebels".) It's enough for them to work on Monday and they may be arrested. As a hilarious video on bureaucracy shows, vigorous work is considered criminal in Spain.

As far as I can say, Catalan president Carles Puigdemont has behaved flawlessly. He's favored the Catalan independence from the 1970s. He was elected with these policies in mind, he saw the unambiguous result of the referendum, and he witnessed the vote of the Catalan Parliament that turned the outcome of the referendum into an official policy.

At the same moment, he has always been open to negotiations and hasn't done anything that could be considered hostile towards Spain by a reasonable observer. He pledged to go to work today because it's his duty. He is aware of the threat of the 30-year prison term. As of noon, no one really knows where he's located but he has made no indication that he's leaving Catalonia. (But I saw reports that he's actually physically in Brussels today – that could make his asylum faster.)

Given the blackmail, there could be rather good personal reasons for him to escape both Catalonia and Spain. Belgium migration minister Theo Francken has pointed out that the Catalan officials are unlikely to get a fair trial in Spain so it's realistic enough to think about granting asylum to Puigdemont and perhaps other people.

A Spanish apparatchik angrily responded that the Belgian statement was unacceptable. It's a huge blasphemy for the Belgian politician to doubt that the suspects are treated fairly – and Francken should be sent to a concentration camp to change his mind. OK, I added the last piece but this full story is a sensible sketch of the absurdity of the situation.

In recent years, millions of migrants came from the Muslim world and/or Africa to Europe with a clear plan: to devour as much money through the generous welfare systems as possible. Almost none of them were genuine refugees saving their lives or other existential aspects of their lives. In fact, one could argue that almost none of the countries is so bad that lots of their citizens could be considered legitimate refugees. This is particularly the case after the successful battles against Daesh in Syria and Iraq that have shrunk the Caliphate almost by an order of magnitude relatively to its peak size. Most of the Muslim world still sucks – but it sucks because of the habits of most of the citizens. While that world sucks, there are almost no legitimate justifications for a citizen's becoming a refugee – a small number of exceptions exists.

Almost all these Muslims are moving to Europe in order to get the money. On the other hand, the Catalan officials are demonstrably threatened. Even those who were against the independence – e.g. the mayor of Barcelona Ms Ada Colau – have been threatened with huge prison terms just because they cooperated with the organization of the referendum in one way or another.

Maybe the Spanish laws imply that one may be thrown to prison for tens of years just for placing a ballot box somewhere and collecting ballots from fellow citizens in order to find out their opinions. But in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, it's equally criminal to be homosexual or stuff like that. These are rules that may hold inside these countries but they don't automatically hold in the rest of the world. In other countries – and let me admit that I am talking about countries that I consider more civilized – many of the laws that are valid in Saudi Arabia raise our eyebrows.

Spain is probably not as barbaric as Saudi Arabia when it comes to the respect for the basic civic rights in that country. But Spain is somewhere in between Saudi Arabia and the civilized European countries. Everyone who has held any public job in Catalonia – any job in which he or she represented the desires and interests of the Catalan nation (or the inhabitants of the Catalan autonomous region of Spain) – is obviously much more existentially threatened these days than way over 95% of the migrants from the Muslim world. I find it obvious that the average top Catalan official is even more threatened than the average Christian in the Muslim world.

These Catalan public workers should be granted asylum in any decent European country if they ask for the asylum. Sadly, all these rules are basically upside down in the contemporary European political systems that surround us. Criminals are in charge, they get all the fees, while the brave yet decent people who work hard to peacefully and fairly represent their constituents's legitimate interests are being threatened with decades in prisons and almost no one dares to help them. I am ashamed of belonging to the same race as the Spanish fascist politicians and the cowards who became politicians in most of the European countries. You're pathetic scum, ladies and gentlemen.

Good luck to President Puigdemont. He may need lots of it now.

And that's the memo.

Update: Minutes ago, Spanish prosecutors have charged Puigdemont and all 13 other members of his government with sedition, rebellion, misuse of funds, and other bogus – and self-evidently politically motivated – charges. Contemporary Spain just doesn't belong to the modern European civilization.

Update II: The bail sum was set to €6 million. The Madrid fascists obviously plan to treat him on par with Osama bin Laden. Unless he has some spare coins from the lunch at McDonald's, I recommend him to stay in Brussels.